This blog started with a series of online audio-conference seminars to celebrate the International Year of Languages in 2008. Many people who care about languages teaching and learning in Australia interacted online. The blog is now broader reflections about language and languages in life. Access archives by scrolling down the page. Useful pro-languages quotations at lower left. Phillip Mahnken, Sunshine Coast, Australia

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

"Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! And the tongue is a fire ..."

My attention was caught by this biblical quote in Marilynn Robinson's novel GILEAD (2004). So I looked it up. So much poetic expression in this General Epistle of James. Here are the surrounding verses.

3:2 For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. 3:3 Now if we put the horses’ bridles into their mouths that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also. 3:4 Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither the impulse of the steersman willeth. 3:5 So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! 3:6 And the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. 3:7 For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind. 3:8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison. 3:9 Therewith bless we the Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the likeness of God: 3:10 out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 3:11 Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter? 3:12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither can salt water yield sweet. 3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom. 3:14 But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth. 3:15 This wisdom is not a wisdom that cometh down from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 3:16 For where jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile deed. 3:17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy. 3:18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for them that make peace. eBible

And that is a first century CE philosopher with a linguistic bent saying Life's what you make it with your discourse. Language matters much, content, diction, tone and attitude in context, and our speech acts determine war and peace, happiness and suffering. It also makes me think how much linguistics (before the term) grew out of the translation and interpretation of religious scripts.

I only read Housekeeping this month and now GILEAD. What a writer! Encouraging that she began later in life!

“Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture“ - Anthony Burgess. [Found on LinkedIn Language Learning group]

"If you talk in his language, that goes to the heart."

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part. O.Henry, Calloway's Code

When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre." Comment by the late Kenneth Hale, cited in The Economist (November 3,2001).

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. - Ambrose Bierce

Dance is the mother of all languages." R.G. Collingwood, British philosopher and historian.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. St Augustine (quoted at photographer Kerin Burford's beautiful Travel Gallery)

Annie Robertson, who teaches Japanese and TESOL, sent a favourite quote:
"Language is a steed that carries one into a far country."

American children's writer Russell Hoban, born in 1925, once said that language is an archeological vehicle, full of the remnants of dead and living pasts, lost and buried civilisations and technologies. The language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history. [in article by Ghilad Zuckermann, 26 August 2009 Aboriginal languages deserve revival]

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From a World Poetry Day site in the Philippines:
"Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind." -- Maxwell Bodenheim.

Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The power, the efficiency and the beauty of all things are functions of their difference. Attributed to Frieda M. Holt.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

Quote from artist Michael Leunig:-
"Love one another and you will be happy. It is as simple, and as difficult, as that"
put by the school chaplain in the school newsletter, Lilydale , Tasmania

Dave Nutting spotted this in the Age newspaper. Passed on by by Catherine Gosling.
“He’s got planes, trains, untold billions and even a spaceship. So is there anything Richard Branson [owner of Virgin-brand companies] can’t get his hands on? Well, yes actually.”
“I wonder if there is anything Branson regrets not having done.”
“I’d love to be able to speak languages,
he says.”
From: What’s not to smile about, by Mark Dapin, Good Weekend, August 16th, 2008

Australian General Peter Cosgrove:
"I unequivocally endorse the sentiment, expressed by the eminent American historian Henry Adams, that “A teacher affects eternity; they can never tell where their influence stops.” Australian General Peter Cosgrove AC, MC. in address to the Ausralian Principals Association. Melbourne 30 May 2002.

Also from Gen. P. Cosgrove: "I cannot imagine a future in which people of all cultures and nations are not increasingly connected by ties of travel commerce and migration. [...] Language skills and cultural sensitivity will be the new currency of this world order. Along with computer literacy they will provide the keys to participation in the global economy.[...] Our future prosperity and security will depend on our ability to understand these cultures and to build bridges to the citizens of these nations and all our immediate neighbours."

"Prejudice is the ultimate form of human ignorance."

"One key deficiency in our capabilities in East Timor was the lack of language skills across the spectrum. We needed more linguists to provide liaison with our Coalition partners. And just as importantly there were more misunderstandings based on cultural differences than any of us could have anticipated, or would have desired."

"Commercial links, alone, will never render war unthinkable. What will, however, are mutual understanding and respect and the banishing of prejudice."

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

from The Lord of the Rings

"Another fairy dies every time someone says foreign languages are a waste of time." Michelle S, graduate of USC, now in Dept of Defence.

"In a world which is becoming smaller and more of a 'Global Community', understanding and tolerance are essential for a productive and peaceful future. The best way for students to gain an insight into another nation and its culture is through the study of its language and literature. For this reason all Principals must ensure that the study of Languages is an integral part of their school's curriculum."

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple. The philosophy is kindness." [Dalai Lama, by way of Eve-Marie Lainchbury]

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Thomas Paine, English-born supporter of the American Revolution. [by way of Rupert Macgregor of ACSSO]

Professor Joe Camilleri, in opening the 2007 National Seminar on Languages Education (Melbourne, November 2007), spoke of language as being : at the heart of all human learning; the mirror of all human development; the link between the biological and the cultural; the compass of culture; and the mediation between I and Thou [by way of Michael Traynor in Catholic Education, ACT and NSW]

"Language is consciousness." “A language reflects a singular nature of a people speaking it.” “Language is identity.” "It’s going to give them a sense of self, to know themselves. The fact that they’re speaking the language is empowerment in itself.” Quotes from various speakers in a New York times article on preserving the 800 disappearing languages found among migrants in New York: Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages

“The poet, by composing poems, uses a language
that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.”~Jean Cocteau. >> [swiped from Karen Carter's Facebook.]

Any word over ten letters in English is the same word in French. Fact. Sloan Crosby, satirist, author.